


Gisei no Kohitsuji [Sacrificial Lamb]

by thegrubbypony



Series: Feeding Grounds [1]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King, Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Blood and Gore, Cannibalism, Eddie Kaspbrak Loves Richie Tozier, Eddie is a Ghoul, Ghouls, Homophobia, M/M, Panic Attacks, Pennywise is His Own Warning (IT), Pennywise is a Ghoul, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, Sonia Kaspbrak's A+ Parenting, Violence, Vomiting, specific TW are at the start of each chapter, there's a lot going on here
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:26:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26201113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegrubbypony/pseuds/thegrubbypony
Summary: Eddie makes a mistake. The consequences put him in hospital, with the organs of a monster inside of him, and soon he's dragged kicking and screaming into the dark and dangerous world of Ghouls; humanoid creatures that can survive only on the flesh of humans. Only one thing becomes certain: the Losers can't know what he's become.Meanwhile, the Losers try to uncover the cause of the missing children of Derry themselves, skating ever closer to Eddie's little secret...
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Series: Feeding Grounds [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1902784
Comments: 9
Kudos: 31





	1. Genten // Origin

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so… I decided to start reading the Tokyo Ghoul manga and this is what popped into my head, but I want to emphasise that you don’t need to have watched/read TG to understand this fic – I explain all the necessary stuff in the fic itself. Also, while the first few chapters have a lot in common with the first few chapters/episodes of TG, it is not a carbon copy and I have changed a lot to fit with the new context. To preface this story, the following is important to note:  
> 1\. The Losers form BEFORE Georgie dies, and the year is 1983  
> 2\. After approx. chapter 3 the plot diverges completely from TG and focuses on IT  
> 3\. It will eventually become a crossover with Stranger Things in a sequel fic
> 
> TAG WARNING: There will be cannibalism, discussions around eating that may be triggering for those with eating disorders, and gore throughout this whole fic, if any of that bothers you then this will not be for you!
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoy this, I will be putting specific tag warnings at the start of each chapter! This chapter is relatively short, and contains some gore/violence, and some referenced pedophilia (no actual pedophilia happens)

**Summer, 1983**

It must have been the best summer of his life, to begin with.

For one, he had more friends now than he’d ever thought was possible. Beverly, Ben, and Mike appeared seemingly out of nowhere, slotting themselves into the existing group as if they were born for it, and although they’d only known each other since before Christmas it felt like they’d been together all their lives. Not even the threat of a concerning amount of missing children could dampen their spirits.

Yet… even then, Eddie could feel that something was shifting. He was so happy, and he would never deny that, but the feeling of being the odd one out was equally as undeniable. He was happy, yes, but did they feel the same way? Bill seemed with every day that passed to become enraptured with Beverly and as his oldest friend that kind of made Eddie feel a little… well, jealous. Bill and Eddie had been friends the longest, longer even than he’d been friends with Richie. It felt a lot like being left behind.

But Eddie never mentioned it. He preferred maintaining the current status quo to the potential shattering of it, even if it hurt.

As it turned out, the status quo never stuck around for very long.

“Hey there.”

Eddie started and blinked dumbly at the arcade machine as his pixel character promptly keeled over and died. The frustration was short lived, the angry scowl slipping off his face as quickly as it had grown there when he looked sharply at the person that had appeared beside him. A boy, older than Eddie by a good few years, was looking at him with a soft, lopsided smile. Immediately, Eddie thought he was looking at an older version of Richie. The same mop of dark hair, a bone structure that Richie had already begun to develop, the same warm, alert eyes – he even had the same smile. Eddie’s cheeks flushed pink.

“Uh, hi,” he said, quietly.

“Sorry,” the boy replied with an airy chuckle. “I didn’t mean to startle you. You were doing well.”

 _His voice is nice,_ he thought, _I wonder if he can do Voices just like Richie?_

“It’s alright,” Eddie found himself saying. “Can- Can I help you?”

The boy grinned. “I just thought you were cute and wanted to say hi. You here with anyone?”

And that nearly knocked him off his feet. He could feel how red his face had gone and the worlds tumbled out of his mouth on reflex.

“I’m – that’s not – I’m not _cute!”_

The boy only laughed, and it was a hearty, rich laugh. “You’re even cuter when you get mad. My name is Charlie, kid.”

“Oh,” Eddie blanched. “Eddie. Nice to meet you, Charlie.”

Charlie smiled and got this strange look in his eye. Eddie knew that look.

At some point when he was growing up, Eddie became aware of the fact that some of the boys he met looked at him funny. It wasn’t a hateful look, or a look of disgust, or even the look of indifference that most of the people in Derry held up to their faces like a mask, but something he couldn’t describe. He wondered what they were thinking when they looked at him like that, with their eyes slightly wide and a faint blush on their cheeks, lips parted as if they wanted to say something but didn’t have the words. It was only sometime later, when Beverly came into the picture, that he understood what it meant. It was the same way both Ben and Bill looked at _her_.

Now Charlie was looking at him like that, albeit with more confidence and self-assurance. It made Eddie’s knees weak. _I wish Richie would look at me like that._

“Do you like ice cream, Eddie?” He was startled out of his thoughts and Eddie blinked at the older boy before nodding. “Would you like to get some with me?”

He felt uneasy, butterflies fluttering around in his belly. “Uh, now?”

“Yes, now,” Charlie said with another chuckle. “Unless you _are_ here with someone else…?”

Eddie looked back at where the other Losers were huddled around an arcade game with Richie at the helm, his arms moving frantically as he jammed the buttons and screeched at the screen, the others either watching quietly or offering sporadic advice that Richie was undoubtedly ignoring. None of them so much as glanced back at him. Since when had they all grouped up like that? How didn’t he notice?

“Ah,” Charlie said, softly. “Do they always ignore you like this?”

“They’re not- they’re not ignoring me,” Eddie replied, sharply, but his heart wasn’t in it. “They’re just busy. That’s all.”

Charlie hummed. “That’s not what it looks like to me. A pretty boy like you shouldn’t be ignored. They don’t appreciate you enough, Eddie.”

And he looked back at the Losers, waiting for one of them to turn around and wave him over, but of course they didn’t, and Charlie’s softly spoken words began to sink in. This had happened before. Out of all the Losers, somehow it was always Eddie that got pushed to the outskirts. Even Stan, as quiet and reserved as he was, never seemed to get forgotten about quite like Eddie did. Maybe he was a bit of a buzz kill, or maybe he was too annoying, but either way the result was the same. Sometimes he was just left to the wayside. Sometimes he wondered if they’d even notice if he wasn’t there at all.

A hand came to squeeze his shoulder and he looked up at Charlie carefully, swallowing the lump in the back of his throat. Charlie was _handsome_ in a way that only came with age. He didn’t have any of the squishy, soft qualities that came from baby fat. He didn’t know exactly how old Charlie was, but he was at least sixteen or seventeen years old… somewhere, deep in the back of Eddie’s mind, he knew that sixteen year olds shouldn’t be talking to thirteen year olds like this, that the look in his eyes should be aimed at people his own age, but that awful loneliness crept up on him once more and Eddie found it hard to listen to his sensibilities.

“Come on,” Charlie said, and his voice was sickly sweet. “I’ll get you some ice cream, to cheer you up. I’ll have you back here before they even notice you’re gone. It can be our secret.”

There was a certain thrill in sneaking away that enticed him. His mother would pitch a fit if she knew he was wandering off with someone so much older than him to get _ice cream_ , one of the many items on her list of forbidden fruits, and so what if the thought of spiting her was enough to keep him buzzed for the rest of the week? Charlie was still smiling, the expression making him look so lovely he was hard to resist. He found his own mouth lifting into a hesitant smile in return.

“Okay,” he said quietly.

Charlie’s smile turned into a toothy grin and his fingers squeezed his shoulder again before dropping away. They left the arcade with one last glance back to the Losers, who still hadn’t noticed him, and his heart hammered all the way to the door. His palms were sweaty, and he couldn’t think of anything to say to strike up a conversation, but Charlie didn’t seem to mind. He was still smiling.

It took about ten minutes for Eddie to realise something wasn’t right.

He frowned as they turned a corner. This wasn’t the right way. Did Charlie know where he was going? Were they lost? Charlie didn’t seem like the type to be too proud to admit he was lost… Eddie didn’t mention it until the itchy feeling of unease became too great to ignore.

“Charlie?” he began, meekly. “Where are we going?”

Charlie glanced at him with a smile. “To get ice cream, Eddie. I know a place.”

He chewed on his bottom lip nervously, but otherwise said nothing. He was silent even as they walked into the abandoned building, still stuck in a state of being half-built and forgotten. Inside, it was dark save for the light filtering through the unfinished ceiling and murky, dirt-stained windows. It wasn’t clear what it was meant to be, but Eddie thought it looked like a warehouse. The floor was empty and covered in a layer of dirt, save for the scaffolding that had been left flush against the walls. This place hadn’t even been breathed near for years. Eddie stopped, watching fitfully as Charlie walked ahead, deeper into the warehouse.

“Charlie…?”

“So… that was easier than I thought.”

Eddie’s blood ran cold, and his eyes widened. Something in the older boy’s voice had changed. It’s soft edges has hardened into the edge of a knife and the warmth had turned cold. Charlie wasn’t facing him, so he couldn’t see the expression on his face, but Eddie wasn’t sure he _wanted_ to see.

“Charlie?” Eddie asked in a small voice. “Please, what- what’s going on?”

“Don’t worry, Eddie. It will be over soon.”

In the blink of an eye, literally, Charlie was in front of him and the dirt had kicked up into the air behind him with the speed at which he’d moved. Eddie hardly had time to digest the movement before Charlie’s hands were clamping on his shoulders and his jaws were latching onto the flesh of his shoulder where it met his neck. Pain lanced through him, but all he could manage was a ragged, violent gasp for air. Charlie’s teeth cut through his skin and his muscle like a knife through butter and he tore off a chunk with ease, blood squirting up from the fresh, gaping wound and spilling into his shirt. Eddie couldn’t scream. It stuck in his throat.

Charlie swallowed. “Aha… I wasn’t lying, you know. You a _re_ cute. If you didn’t taste so damn good I’d probably keep you alive.”

Eddie felt his knees give out as a wet, hot mouth pressed to the thumping artery in his neck, just below his jaw. Arms wrapped around his waist to keep him upright, pressing him to Charlie’s chest as the older boy’s teeth pricked at his skin. He whimpered uselessly as Charlie pulled back to look him in the eyes… but his eyes weren’t normal. Instead, the sclera were black and the irises, which had been green before, were now a rich crimson. Eddie’s own eyes watered and he daren’t even blink, lest he’d find himself never opening his eyes again.

“Oh, kid,” Charlie hummed, his stained tongue darting out to lick his lips. “Think about it. I’m doing you a favour, aren’t I? Your friends don’t care about you. Why would anyone care about you? You’ll grow up cute, but they’ll just fuck you and leave you behind… you don’t want that, do you, Eddie? You don’t want to live like that…”

Tears streamed down his cheeks. “I-I don’t want to _die_.”

Charlie sighed. “Too bad.”

Suddenly, in the light of imminent death, Eddie finally grew a sense of self-preservation. He slammed the heel of his palm up into Charlie’s nose as hard as he could and, to his surprise, it seemed to work. Charlie’s arms loosened enough to let him shove himself out of his clutches, although his legs struggled to keep him up. Charlie growled – an a _ctual_ growl, as if he were a big dog with froth leaking out the sides of its mouth – and lunged for him. He felt the fingers around his ankle and shrieked as Charlie hoisted him back, throwing him halfway across the warehouse floor and further away from the exit than he’d started. Eddie rolled to a halt and groaned, hastily rubbing the dirt from his eyes, and coughing to clear his lungs.

“You are feisty,” Charlie said. “You’d do well as one of us. It’s a shame you taste so good, and I am so, _so_ hungry, Eddie. You have no idea.”

“It’s you,” Eddie choked. “You’re the one killing all those kids, aren’t you?”

Charlie stopped, his red and black eyes glaring down at the smaller boy with a level of respect in them. His reddened lips twisted into a smirk as he crouched down to leer at Eddie like a cat playing with a half-dead mouse.

“I suppose I can afford you the truth,” Charlie said. “It’s the least I can do before I kill you. No, little Eddie, I don’t like to make a habit of killing children. They’re a treat, you see. So, no, I’m afraid all those dead kids aren’t my work… You must understand, only a true glutton has a diet solely of children. I like to think I have a little more self-control than that.”

His eyes widened and his breath shuddered in his chest. That meant Charlie wasn’t the only one of these flesh-eating monsters. There were more. How many more were there? What were they? Tears sprang in his eyes again at the thought of the Losers getting picked off one by one by something just like Charlie. He had to survive, if only to warn them. For a moment, he had visions of Richie’s body strewn across the floor, with chunks of flesh missing and his sightless eyes staring into the distance.

“Fuck you,” Eddie spat, venomous and brave despite the tears rolling down his face. “Fuck you, you deranged son of a bitch! I hope something bigger than you comes along and tears your fucking head off! _Fuck you!”_

For a moment, Charlie only stared. His expression was unreadable. Eddie’s chest heaved. He wanted to jam his fingers into those red eyes and gouge them out.

“You are something special, Eddie,” Charlie said eventually, and his voice sounded distant. “Don’t get me wrong, the wailing and crying is always fun, but... They’re all the same. You’re _interesting_. I might just like to have some more fun with you before I kill you.”

Before Eddie could register what he’d said, Charlie was reaching down and taking his arm, bringing it up to rip another mouthful of muscle from the bone. The scream that tore itself out of Eddie’s throat was violent and painful, but it was all he could do apart from attempt to pry the larger boy off of him with his free hand to no avail. It took every ounce of strength he had left not to vomit when Charlie pulled back. Eddie was unable to look away from the strings of muscle fibre that stuck to his exposed bone. The nausea swept through him like a tidal wave and he gritted his teeth.

There was a sickening tearing sound and the air around them crackled. With blood splattered across his face, Eddie stared at the appendages that had ruptured from Charlie’s back – red, armoured tentacles, compact enough to look like marble and yet tensile enough to bend as easily as another muscle. Eddie felt like his eyes might have popped out of his skull, they were so wide. Charlie grinned, teeth clamped around bleeding flesh, before Eddie watched his throat bob as he swallowed.

“Oh, no, I just can’t wait that long,” Charlie said, hysterically. “You just taste so _good!”_

One of the tentacles coiled like a snake and Eddie barely managed to scream in protest before it was striking, punching through his belly and out the other side. He choked on the blood that burst up into his throat and his vision went white with agony. The tentacle moved within his guts and he could _feel_ it wriggling before it slid out just as fast. He collapsed into a dead weight on the ground.

“Still alive?” Charlie laughed. “I dread to think what you’d be like as one of us, little fighter. You’d be giving us all hell.”

Through the pain and the slow shutting down of his body, he felt Charlie kneel down beside him.

Then, quite without warning, he heard something groan above him. Charlie heard it too and his red eyes flickered up to look at the unfinished roof, but it was too late. Metal cords were snapping, cracking through the air like a whip, and steel bars were sliding out of their bindings. After that, the whole building seemed to cave in. The roof went first, then the scaffolding. Eddie saw it all happen in slow motion as the air bled from his lungs in one fell swoop. He only felt the panic for a split second as it all came crashing down on top of them, with Charlie’s scream of disbelief echoing in his ears. Eddie didn’t make a sound. He felt a moment of agony, then nothing at all.

In the darkness that followed, he heard scattered voices.

_“- found two bodies! Oh – Oh God, Jesus **Christ** , get an ambulance! One of them is breathing!”_

_“-organs are too badly damaged-”_

_“He has severe internal bleeding and-”_

_“The other one – organ transplant-”_

_“-my Eddie-bear, and it’s all your fault, you wretched children! I **told** him to stay away-”_

_“Hey Eddie, it’s me Beverly. It’s been a few days now… We miss you. All of us. Richie has driven us all insane… It’s not the same without you here. We should have noticed that you weren’t there-”_

_“I’m so fucking sorry, Eds, just, **please** , wake up…”_

_“Eds, don’t leave me. I need you. I didn’t get to tell you that I-”_

*

Somewhere in the shadows of Derry, a creature grinned to itself.

The young Ghoul had it coming. He had started getting cocky, thinking it stood a chance at taking its territory away from it. The very thought was amusing. He was a mere child, hardly a match for its power. Still… it was a shame to waste a perfectly good child in the process of snuffing the Ghoul out. His screams were particularly delectable…

It mattered little, after all there was no shortage of children in Derry. Perhaps it would just take one of his friends to make up for it.


	2. Aratana Hajimari // A New Beginning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can already tell this fic isn't going to get a lot of attention, but that's okay, I have 40k written up already so I'll keep posting for anyone that does like it! It is very niche, I can admit that much lmao. 
> 
> Chapter Warnings: descriptions of eating/vomiting/food that may be triggering for those with eating disorders, description of the aftermath of a car crash, blood, descriptions of surgical scars

Eddie opened his eyes slowly.

The room was too bright. It hurt, so he screwed his eyes shut again and groaned, the sound coming out weak and hoarse through his parched throat. As he dragged himself further out of unconsciousness, he realised it wasn’t just his eyes that hurt, but his entire body was crippled by a deep ache. He blinked and took in a breath as his vision cleared. Where the hell was he? He looked down at himself. A hospital bed…? Panic niggled at the back of his mind. Why was he- Oh. _Oh._ It flooded back to him all at once and it hit him so hard that he could only clutch at his sheets in horror.

_“I might just like to have some fun with you before I kill you.”_

Bile rose up in the back of his throat and he gripped the sheets so hard that his fists shook. Then, upon feeling the phantom pain of teeth sinking into his skin, his hands shot to his neck and he jerked his arm up to look at where there should have been a gaping divot… only there was no such thing, and he felt only smooth, unbroken skin on his neck, too. Neither his arm nor his neck were even bandaged. There was no sign that there had been any injury at all. Eddie trembled.

The door slid open and the first face he saw belonged to Beverly.

“Eddie?” she said, sharply, and he flinched. “Eddie, oh my god, you’re awake-”

She rushed towards him and dragged him into a fleeting hug, recoiling when he hissed at the pain and profusely apologising for it. He vaguely registered Stan rushing out of the room to get a doctor. Skirting around the bed to come to his other side, Richie took his hand almost frantically and Eddie’s mind went blank. Richie’s eyes were flooded with tears and his face was sickly pale, with dark bags under his eyes and dishevelled hair.

“Eds, are you okay?” Upon lack of response, his eyes widened in concern and Eddie’s heart stuttered. “What’s wrong? Why do you have that look on your face? It’s me, Richie. You’re at the hospital, you’re safe. Say something, Spaghetti, you’re freaking me out.”

Eddie frowned. “Don’t call me that.”

His friend relaxed in relief. “That’s my Eddie. I thought you were like - a zombie or something for a second there, man.”

He froze, and he heard flesh tearing from bone. _Zombie._

“Charlie,” he said, the word lurching out of him. “Where is he?”

Something strange passed over Richie’s face, then, and the other Losers shared unreadable looks. He stared at them expectantly until Ben finally spoke, softly and uncertainly in the silence.

“The guy they found you with is dead,” he explained. “He was declared dead at the scene, actually. They, uh… they…”

Eddie clenched his hands into fists. “They _what,_ Ben?”

When Ben didn’t answer, it was Beverly that butted in. “You were almost dead, Eddie. They had to- God, they had to get you some new organs and his were… his blood type happened to be a match for you.”

He looked at her with wide, uncomprehending eyes for a moment. Charlie’s organs… were inside of him. The same organs that housed his own muscle and skin and blood after Charlie had taken them from him. Organs that did not belong to a human at all. He looked away with tears in his eyes. He’d read about what happens when the body rejects organs. He was fascinated and horrified by it in equal measure when he first discovered it. It had been after another battle with his mother where she’d mentioned it haphazardly. His hands slowly came to rest on his stomach and his fingers flexed against his belly, but Richie’s fingers pried them away.

“It’s gonna be okay, Eds,” he said softly, far more softly than Richie should have been capable of, but he managed it for Eddie. “Please don’t be sad. Don’t blame yourself for what happened to him or you.”

“I’m not _sad_ ,” he snapped. “He can _rot_ for all I care.”

Richie flinched and the others were all visibly struck by the venom in his words.

“Eddie,” Beverly began, tentatively. “Who was he? Why were you…?”

“He tried to fucking kill me,” he said, and his voice faltered, cracking as the words slipped out. “He- He tried- I was so _scared_.”

Richie was getting up on the bed to sit beside him, then, and his arms wrapped gingerly around Eddie so not to hurt him. He finally began to cry and buried his face in Richie’s shirt to hide his face as he sobbed. This was all so fucked up – first he nearly gets eaten alive, then he has the organs of his would-be-murderer transplanted into him? If this was meant to be some kind of cruel joke on behalf of the universe, it wasn’t very fucking funny. The only solace was Richie’s warmth, his cheek resting on top of Eddie’s head, and the smell of-

He stiffened. Since when did Richie smell like that? His mouth began to water, and he clutched at him a little tighter.

“Hey, it’s alright Eds, it could be worse.” Richie sounded like he’d been crying the whole time too. “Your mom could have walked in instead of us. Could you imagine that shitshow?”

He laughed. It burst out between the sniffling and the others chuckled lightly too. Richie didn’t try to make a mom joke; he had the sense to know this wasn’t the time.

“You were really lucky, Eddie,” Mike said, and when Eddie looked up the boy appeared troubled, with a deep frown on his face. “They said most of the rubble missed landing on top of you.”

His hands went to his belly again. “I… I felt it go straight through me…”

Nobody responded, but Richie’s arms tightened. He didn’t know what they thought he meant, but his vision was briefly filled with red tentacles. How was he ever going to explain that to anybody? They’d think he was crazy. They’d probably laugh at him. The weight of hopelessness brought him heavier into Richie’s embrace.

“I-I-It’s alright, E-Eddie,” Bill said, eventually. “Wuh-We won’t l-leave you a-again.”

Eddie smiled wetly and by the time Stan finally arrived with a doctor, he had calmed down at least enough to pull away from Richie and sit upright. The doctor told him he’d been unconscious for a week. That he underwent several extensive surgeries to put him back together and transplant the new organs. That it was a miracle he was even alive at all, and that he was healing remarkably quickly. They mentioned nothing of his arm, or his neck, and Eddie decided not to mention it. He listened to what the doctor had to say in complete silence, just occasionally nodding his head and wiping tears from his eyes. He held Richie’s hand.

Then his mother arrived.

“Eddie-bear!” she wailed, barging through the door, and the Losers jumped up and out of her way as she seized his hand. “Get away from my son, you cretins! How dare you come near him after what you did to him!”

“They didn’t do anything, mom,” he said quickly. “I wandered off on my own.”

“Nonsense, you wouldn’t do something like that, you don’t have to defend them honey, I know what their kind are like-”

_“Mom!”_ he snapped. “It’s the truth. I left the arcade with Charlie on my own, I didn’t tell them I was going, alright? Now stop being horrible to my friends.”

He wasn’t sure where the confidence had come from, and by the looks on everyone’s faces they were wondering the same thing. Eddie just kept his steady glare of defiance on his mother’s face as she blubbered and spluttered in shock.

“Eddie, why would you do that? I told you not to trust strangers, didn’t I? Why would you disobey me like that? Do you not love me? Eddie-bear?”

He slumped back against his pillow with an exasperated sigh. He was too tired for this. There were too many people huddled in his room, it made it hard to think, it was almost as if he could _feel_ their hearts hammering in his ear drums, and the smell… why did they all smell so good?

“You,” he heard his mother hiss out through her teeth. “All of you. Get out. I don’t want to see you near my son again! Do you understand me?”

“He can hang out with whoever he wants!” Richie screeched back.

Eddie opened his eyes just in time to see Mike reaching out to take Richie’s arm, as Bill interjected before Eddie’s mom could enter a shouting match with a thirteen-year-old.

“I-I think we shuh-should leave,” Bill said, looking at Eddie resolutely. “We’ll s-see you later, E-Eddie.”

And then they left him.

*

They kept him at the hospital for a while after that. His body had done the bulk of the healing while he was unconscious, but they needed to keep him under observation until they were happy to let him go home. They put him on immunosuppressants, which were just another addition to the litany of drugs his mother had him taking like clockwork, so it didn’t bother him too much. The doctors were impressed with the way his body was healing – in fact, it was almost to the point of disbelief. That didn’t bother him either.

What bothered him was the _food_.

He knew hospital food wasn’t exactly meant to taste amazing (he’d had it enough times to have grown accustomed to it) but this was on another level entirely. It was slimy and foul-tasting, a mere mouthful making him feel queasy. He just couldn’t stomach it. For the rest of his stay at the hospital, he lived practically off water, but he never lost weight and never grew hungry. _That_ was making him nervous. Really nervous. Was something wrong with the organs? Was his body rejecting them? Was this some kind of medical mystery, where his new organs had ruined his sense of taste? The doctors assured him all was well with his body, but the fact still remained. He couldn’t _eat anything._ Even keeping his damn pills down was a chore, and most of the time they ended up mixed with his puke in the toilet.

After that, his mother had him on house arrest, which he was expecting.

“Eat up, Eddie-bear, I made your favourite as a welcome home treat! I don’t want to see a single scrap of it left on that plate, the doctors told me you hardly ate at the hospital, though I’m not surprised, that hospital food just isn’t good enough, I really should…”

Eddie tuned her out, staring at his plate full of food and trying to swallow the nausea that was already swelling in his gut. Normally, he would be wolfing it down. She’d be telling him to slow down or he’ll choke. Now, even the smell was making him nervous. He poked at it with his fork.

“Eddie-bear? Are you alright? Are you not hungry?”

He forced a smile. “Not really, mommy.”

She tutted. “I want to see it eaten, okay? It’s not healthy to skip meals!”

His smiled dropped. Slowly, he stuck some food on his fork and brought it up to his mouth, trying not to breathe in the smell. He put it in his mouth and almost flinched but caught it at the last second before his mother could notice. Chewing it felt like he was chewing on something raw, the meat tasting completely _wrong_ and the rest of it making his jaw sting with how sour it was. Eddie ate very slowly. He focused only on chewing and swallowing in an almost endless cycle. At the end, his eyes were watering and his belly felt so swollen and nauseous that it was taking every ounce of his strength not to spew all over the dining table.

“Good boy,” his mother crooned. “Doesn’t that feel much better?”

He gritted his teeth, wiping away a droplet of sweat that trickled down the side of his face.

“M-May I be excused?” he asked. “I think I need to lay down.”

“Of course, Eddie-bear! You must be exhausted, those hospital beds are really not suitable for someone like you, I knew you wouldn’t get a wink of sleep in that place…”

It was a marvel, sometimes, how his mother could flip flop between wanting nothing more than to take him to the hospital and hating the very thought of him being there. It seemed all that mattered to her was that she had something to worry about. The thought was only a fleeting one as he all but sprinted upstairs to the bathroom. His knees hit the tiled floor hard, but the pain hardly registered. Burying his head in the toilet, Eddie puked his guts up with his throat burning and his lungs aching with the need to breathe. Panic began to claw at the edges of his blurry vision.

When it finally stopped, he slumped back against the side of the bathtub and gasped for breath. He didn’t dare look into the toilet bowl. Now his stomach was emptied, he felt better, the relief making his shoulders sag and his eyelids droop. He waited for his mother to appear at the door, but she didn’t. From downstairs, the muffled sound of the television told him she hadn’t heard him over whatever program she was watching.

As soon as his legs regained function, he got to work erasing the evidence. He flushed and cleaned the toilet vigorously, opening the small window to let any of the remaining smell out, before he brushed his teeth with his tongue pressed to the roof of his mouth to avoid the taste. It was only when he finally clambered into bed and curled up under the covers that he cried.

How could he live like this? What was he supposed to _do?_ Would it just go away on its own? Something told Eddie it wouldn’t. He was stuck like this. All because of _Charlie._ Charlie, the handsome boy that looked like Richie, whose eyes turned blood red, who died taking a metal bar to the head. That should have been comforting, it should have meant the threat was gone, but Eddie hadn’t forgotten what Charlie had told him.

There was another one just like him. The Losers had been right all along. There w _as_ something picking off the children of Derry and it would be walking the streets like the rest of them – a predator in the shape of an ordinary human.

They could be _anyone_ and nobody would be any wiser.

*

It was after three more days of avoiding food and vomiting when he had no choice but to eat, that Eddie finally began to feel the nagging sensation of being hungry. It was a deep, aching type of hunger, that only grew the more he tried and failed to stomach a meal. Eventually, the pain grew so strong that he couldn’t sleep, not even for a moment. It was torturous and for once he was glad the Losers were listening to his mother’s warnings about not coming to see him. The last thing he needed was for them to see him like this and ask what was wrong, because he still didn’t have the answer.

Then the weekend came around and he smelt something absolutely _divine_.

He scrambled to his window, thrusting it open and leaning halfway out to peer down the street with his mouth filling with saliva. It was a dark, heavy sort of smell, but the way his body reacted was clear as day. It was something he could eat.

At that point, his body acted almost entirely on its own. He slid out of his window and climbed down to the ground, something he’d done a million times before, and he barely even felt the fact he was still recovering from a serious accident. In fact, he found the climb easier than ever before. As soon as his feet hit the ground he began to walk towards the town centre, but as the smell became stronger his ability to control his pace weakened. Soon enough he was running as fast as his legs could manage. The smell made his teeth ache and his heart hammer in his chest. When he found the source, he stopped dead in the middle of the road.

There’d been a car accident. A bad one.

One car had remained upright, with its front end smashed beyond recognition, while the second lay on its side. Glass decorated the road around them alongside hunks of metal. He frowned as he approached, pushing his way through. Nobody even noticed him as he slipped through them and laid his eyes upon the scene up close, morbid curiosity and hunger taking control. He saw a body hanging over the bonnet of the upright car, legs bent out of shape and trapped in the windshield. Their face was turned away, but it was clear they’d been shredded by the glass on their way out with the amount of blood there was. Eddie stared at the sight with wide eyes and a bloodless face.

Then he clamped his hands over his mouth with a sob of abject horror. _It’s the body,_ he thought frantically, _the smell’s coming from the body._ His lungs tightened and he swallowed the spit gathering in his mouth quickly behind his fingers. He’d been lured out like a wild, starving animal by the smell of a dead fucking body. Dropping heavily to his knees, he continued to stare at the mutilated corpse, because the urge to sink his teeth into it refused to budge even as the horror swelled dangerously inside of him.

A hand came down to rest on his shoulder. “I’d cover your left eye if I were you, child.”

The voice was soft and non-threatening, but he would have said the same about Charlie’s. Eddie slowly turned his head to look at the woman that had crouched by his side. She was beautiful, with pale skin and dark, almost black hair that fell to just above her shoulders. Eddie recognised her as the owner of the arcade, Miss Kurosawa. Her dark eyes looked at him with only the barest hint of emotion. His hands fell from his mouth for one of them to come up to his left eye hesitantly.

“My eye?” he replied, hoarsely.

“You’re hungry,” the woman continued, removing her hand from his shoulder. “And confused, no doubt. I saw you on the news. I think I can explain what’s happening to you if you would like to follow me somewhere private.”

They stared at each other for a moment, Eddie’s hand remaining over his eye. “Following someone is what put me in the hospital in the first place, Miss Kurosawa.”

Her eyes softened. “You know my name?”

“Yes,” he flushed. “You own the arcade, of course we know your name.”

“That’s right, I see you and your friends there all the time. I saw you leave with that boy, the one that died in the accident.”

His throat closed up and she gazed at him searchingly for a moment. The way she said ‘accident’ made it seem she didn’t believe it to be so. He decided to wait for her to continue instead of shoving his foot in his mouth.

“I can promise that I’m not in the habit of eating children,” she said, at length. “If that’s what you’re worried about.”

Eddie nearly passed out. “You- wait- do you-?”

“Like I said, I believe this is best discussed in private.”

With his hand still pressed over his eye, Eddie gave a shaky nod. What else could he do? His mouth was _still_ watering copiously from the mere scent of the body and he wasn’t sure what would happen if he lost the last threads of control he had left. Everything was telling him not to make the same mistake as before, but Miss Kurosawa clearly knew more than he did, and was offering her help. She wasn’t a complete stranger, as well. If she wanted to kill him or the Losers then she’d have had plenty of opportunity to already.

So, he followed her to the arcade and only lowered his hand from his eye once they reached it. It was closed and therefore empty apart from them. Inside, with the lights off and the arcade machines all shut down, it was almost eerie, and Eddie’s gaze was automatically drawn to the machine he was playing on when Charlie approached him. A shudder rolled through his frame and Miss Kurosawa glanced at him before turning the lights on.

“Do not think yourself weak,” she said. “Even adult humans can fall foul of the same tricks you did. I’d be more surprised if you _didn’t_ follow him out.”

He regarded her uncertainly for a moment. “Are you… like him?”

“We both are,” Miss Kurosawa replied, bluntly. “Isn’t that what you realised back there?”

She leaned back against her desk and crossed her arms over her chest. Eddie felt cold all over, his face slack with shock.

“But- But I can’t-” His tongue felt heavy in his mouth. “That can’t be true!”

She raised an eyebrow. “Denial gets you nowhere. I admit, I told myself you wouldn’t be affected by those organs when I saw it on the news. I believed it didn’t work like that. But now… Your eye. You should see your eye. You were lucky I saw you before anyone else did.”

Skirting around her desk, she filed through whatever was behind there until she found a makeup compact and flicked it open. She turned it to him and held it out. With shaking hands, Eddie took it from her and peered at his reflection.

One eye was normal. The other… the sclera was black, the iris was blood red. His angry, starved guts coiled and tightened.

“No,” he said, in a fragile whimper. “It- what the hell _am_ I?”

“We are called Ghouls. You… you are only half of one. Such a thing has never happened before. The organs transplanted into your body belonged to a Ghoul and now you have his blood running through your veins. Have you tried eating human food? Have you been able to keep it down? Does the smell make you feel ill? That is because we are not made for eating anything except… well.”

“Except _what?”_ he pressed, his voice distant, as if he were hearing it from a mile away.

Miss Kurosawa stared at him blankly.

“Human flesh, my child. We can only eat human flesh.”

*

Eddie stared at the cup of tea for a long time without saying anything.

Miss Kurosawa had ushered him into one of the back rooms and shoved it in his hands without a word, the pair of them existing silently as he digested the new information. He must admit, he’d blacked out when those words had fallen from her mouth. _Human flesh._ How was anybody supposed to react to that? There was no protocol for that. He merely… zoned out. He wasn’t aware they’d moved until the tea had gone cold and Miss Kurosawa had replaced it with a fresh cup, the new heat against his skin jolting him back to life again with a flinch that nearly spilled tea over the pair of them.

“I apologise,” she said, eventually, and she even sounded genuine. “But I thought being blunt was better than trying to sugar coat it.”

He nodded numbly.

“You can drink, you know. It will taste just fine. Tea and coffee are about the only thing we can have except water that won’t make us ill.”

Glancing down at the tea, Eddie gave it a tentative sip, and found she was telling the truth. It tasted nice and the nausea he was expecting never came. He almost smiled. Almost. If he weren’t dealing with the horror of what he’d become, then it might have happened.

“This is the only town I’ve come across where the knowledge of Ghouls has yet to become reality,” Miss Kurosawa began, closing her eyes with a frown. “It doesn’t even appear on the news. The rest of the world, as far as I’m aware, has been living with Ghouls as a part of society for decades. Derry remains perfectly oblivious and I’ve been trying to figure out why. That’s why I’m here, instead of back home. The arcade just keeps up appearances.”

“Does- Does this have anything to do with the missing kids?”

She frowned. “Missing kids?”

“Yeah. For the past year, a bunch of kids have gone missing… Some adults too, but it’s mainly kids. I asked- uh, Charlie, if it was him doing it before he, you know. Tried to kill me. He said that it was someone else.”

Miss Kurosawa looked away, seemingly to think over what he’d said, before she sighed. “I knew Charlie was here. I’ve been keeping an eye on him. Until the accident with you, he’d been doing well. I never noticed the missing kids… Why didn’t I notice…?”

Something told him she was talking to herself, so he took another sip of tea and watched the cogs turning in her head. He felt like he was practically vibrating with energy now – a frightened, tangible sort of energy that made it hard to focus. He wanted to scream, cry, punch the walls, anything, but he couldn’t do anything except sit. _I’m still in shock,_ his mind supplied, _my body hasn’t caught up yet._

“This place is cursed,” Miss Kurosawa snapped, suddenly, scowling to herself. “Something isn’t right about it and I’m determined to figure out what it is. I’ll have to keep an eye out for this other Ghoul, as will you, child. Your friends are in danger as long as they’re around.”

Eddie gave a shaky exhale. “As long as… _I’m_ around, too?”

“Not entirely,” Miss Kurosawa offered a small smile. “You might think yourself a monster, child, as will the rest of the world. It is not so. Most Ghouls can control themselves and live to never hurt a living being if they learn to cage their urges and monitor their hunger. Hold on a moment.”

She turned with an elegant flourish and, from across the room, Eddie watched, mystified, as she opened a large box that turned out to be a freezer of some kind. Leaning down, she dipped her hand in and brought out something packaged in brown paper. She closed the lid of the freezer and approached him slowly, as if he were a terrified cat trapped in a corner.

“An adult Ghoul can survive for months after consuming a single body,” she explained. “This will tide you over for a good few weeks, given your size.”

Extending the package, Eddie’s heart almost stopped. Even cold, the smell of what he now knew was human flesh was irresistible, but the disgust at the fact he thought human flesh smelt _good_ stayed his hand. For a long moment, he was stuck rigidly between his Ghoul half and his human half. An internal tug of war that made his eyes spring up with tears. The teacup slipped from his fingers and shattered on the floor.

“I-I can’t,” he choked. “I _can’t_.”

“You must,” Miss Kurosawa pressed. “I confess that I can’t begin to understand how you feel. I was born like this, it’s all I’ve ever known. Just know that if you don’t eat this, you’ll eventually lose control. You’ll hurt someone, kill them, then eat them, whether you like it or not. Most likely it will be one of your friends or a member of your family. This package here belongs to someone that died quite on their own. There’s no need to feel guilt for that.”

He could, at least at that moment, believe her. Eddie could believe that he wasn’t a monster only because she had said so and because of the agonising hunger deep inside of him that was almost animal. He lunged for the package and hugged it close to his chest, breathing deeply, with tears running down his face. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew it wouldn’t last, that once the deed was done the guilt would eat him alive, but it was a faint and miniscule worry compared to the hunger. The hunger filled his senses almost entirely.

“Take it home, child,” Miss Kurosawa said gently. “Eat it slowly. Remember where I am.”

“How… How do you pretend…?” he asked, brokenly. “I-I can’t...”

When he looked up at her, finally, he was surprised to see her face softened with pity. She reached out with her manicured nails and her fingers stroked his wet cheek. Eddie leaned into the touch almost instinctively. Not even his mother’s touch was that gentle.

“Avoid eating as much as you can. When you do try to eat, keep it to small amounts, and if you don’t vomit afterwards then _make_ yourself vomit. Otherwise you’ll get sick.”

He nodded dejectedly, a cold shudder rolling through him at the thought of having to force himself to throw up. Getting to his feet, he just about made it to the door before she called out to him, with his hand hovering over the door handle.

“Take this,” she said, holding something in her hand. “For your eye. Until you learn to control yourself better, it will give you away. Make something up about why you have it on, just keep it on as you can for now.”

Eddie walked over and took the object from her hand, turning it over in his own. An eyepatch, a surgical one that was held in place with thin straps. He frowned, blushing, already anticipating the jokes Richie and the others were going to make when they saw him… but… he supposed the jokes would be better than what would happened if they saw his eye like that. He slotted the white fabric against his eye, then tied it behind his head, under his hair. It was strange to look only out of one eye, but he would get used to it.

“Why are you helping me?” he asked, eventually.

Miss Kurosawa looked up in thought. “I may be a Ghoul, but I care about humanity. I have no lust to see them slaughtered. That would make us the monsters they think we are.”

_But we **are** monsters, _he thought, though he kept it behind his teeth.

“If that means guiding someone like you onto the right path,” she continued. “Then I will do so.”

*

At home, he sat on his bed with his legs crossed and the brown package on the sheets in front of him for a long time. He was leant forward with his arms crossed tightly over his churning belly to try and push back some to of the pain, rocking back and forth minutely as a distraction. The pain seemed to come in waves, but even when it disappeared he felt hollow and hungry to the point of tearing his own hair out. Eventually, he lunged for it and clutched it in his hands for a moment, then threw it across the room with a horrified yelp. _That’s human fucking flesh._ He curled into a ball with his hands bracketed on either side of his head to drown out the rushing in his ears.

It would be another hour before he slunk off his bed and crawled towards it. With shaking hands, he picked it up again and fought against the urge to hurl it out of the window. The smell was almost blinding, but the feeling of shame was equally as strong. He picked open the brown paper and nearly gave in… but then the tears began to slide down his face and pushed himself up, opening his window and throwing it out into the trees behind their house. Some animal would get it, eventually.

He turned around and slid down the wall of his room, curling up again to knot his fingers in his hair.

If he ate that meat he’d be just like Charlie. That was a line he refused to cross. There was surely another way – there _must_ be. This wasn’t going to be how he spent the rest of his life.

When the pain ebbed, he went to take a shower and set the water to be scalding hot. He scrubbed his skin within an inch of its life, hoping that the sound of the water was enough to hide his bodily sobs. He scrubbed his scar even harder, taking his anger out on it. The scar stretched from the crease of his hip and abdomen all the way up to his first rib on the left side. It was thick and jagged – as violent as the act that put it there. Looking at it for too long only made him cry harder. Even as he clambered out of the shower and dried his sore skin, the tears never ceased. He was just glad his mother was too engrossed in whatever shit she was watching on TV to notice.

It was when he caught sight of himself in the bathroom mirror that it all seemed to halt.

He was pale, but then again he a _lways_ looked pale. No, it was his eye that rendered him breathless. It just looked so startling against his pallid skin, the red iris threatening and wretched while the black was a bottomless void. It was the eye of a beast. It was his eye, now. He screwed his eyes shut and rubbed them viciously. When he opened them and blinked away the blurriness, his eye had returned to normal. So, it was controllable, to a degree. It was a small glimmer of hope, like a beam of light through a crack in the roof of a dim shed, but it was a glimmer more than he had before. Eddie pushed away from the sink and slunk back to his room quietly, snaking under his covers and closing his eyes.

Before, he wanted to tell the Losers about Charlie more than anything. He’d wanted to feel the pride at having found a piece to the puzzle of the missing children, to feel like there was something good to come out of his ordeal, but now… now something had changed. It felt too close to his secret. If he told them… he’d hear what they really thought about Ghouls and, by extension, what they felt about _him_. A selfish, ugly part of him was afraid of that. He thought of Richie, who in all other aspects was fearless, but was still scared out of his wits by the man-eating werewolves from the movies. He thought of how he might look at Eddie after finding out…

But he didn’t want any of them to die because he didn’t tell them what he knew, either. Eddie fell asleep warring with himself over this question. Did he tell his friends about Ghouls, or not?

*

The next morning, he heard something tapping at his window. He rolled over and glared at his bedside alarm clock, which read 4:47am. Dropping back into his pillows, he groaned and wiped the sleep from his eyes before hoisting himself out of bed. He slid open his window and narrowly missed a pebble smacking him in the nose. With a snarl, he leaned out to shoot his friends a withering glare.

“What the fuck do you want?” he snapped, whisper-shouting so not to wake his mother. “It’s not even 5 in the morning, you assholes! I’m _recovering!”_

“Eddie-Spaghetti, you have got to work on your anger issues,” Richie replied, not nearly as tactful with his volume, and he yelped when Eddie threw the pebble back at him. “Jeez, Eds, where’d you get that kind of throw from?!”

“Shut up!” he hissed. “Why are you here?!”

“Bill wants to meet us at the park,” Mike called up to him. “Bev’s already there. We wanted to see if you wanted to tag along?”

“You’ll be back before your mom even notices,” Ben said. “We promise!”

Eddie huffed and looked back to his bedroom door, gnawing on his bottom lip. He wanted nothing more than too talk to his friends again – any taste of normality outside of his mother was a blessing – despite the shadow of the Ghouls that still loomed over him. He got changed quickly and his eyes flickered to his eye patch on his desk. He grabbed it quickly, putting it on hastily before he began to climb down the front of his house. He turned to his friends and saw them properly for the first time since they visited him in the hospital.

“Whoa, alright, Captain Kaspbrak, what the fuck is up with your eye?”

He glared at Richie darkly. “I fucked it up in the accident, you asshole. The light fucks with my eye so I have to wear this until it doesn’t hurt as much.”

It was a lie he’d scrambled together the night before, and he wasn’t sure if it sounded as confident as he’d hoped, but they didn’t seem to question it.

“It looks kinda cool,” Ben said with a smile. “How are you feeling…?”

“Like I’ve been hit by a bus twice.” A lie, he felt fine, and that was more disconcerting than the lie. “And I have a huge fucking scar now. So, not great.”

Richie gasped. “Let us see the scar!”

_“Richie,”_ Stan admonished, looking completely incensed. “You can’t just ask people if you can see their scars, that’s rude!”

“It’s fine,” Eddie shrugged, though it felt like his heart was about to jump straight up out of his throat. “You’re going to see it eventually, right?”

Mike, Ben, and Stan all shared a look, but Richie was staring at Eddie with wide eyes, as if he’d only just realised the gravity of what he’d asked. He looked both curious and afraid at the same time. Eddie swallowed and slowly lifted his shirt. The answering gasps and sharp inhales were expected, but he still couldn’t bring himself to look at their faces. He hated it enough as it was. He was looking down at it when fingers came into view, hovering over it questioningly. Finally looking up at Richie’s face, the other boy was now standing a lot closer, bike discarded on the ground behind him. Startled, Eddie went to pull his shirt down, but Richie’s other hand stopped him quickly.

“Don’t hide it,” he said, his voice uncharacteristically soft, like it had been at the hospital, and Eddie thought he sounded older than he was. “Can- Can I touch it?”

Eddie wordlessly raised his shirt again and Richie’s eyes, magnified by his glasses, tilted down to look at the scar again while Eddie’s attention remained fixed on his expression. As his fingers grazed over the scar, Eddie flinched, and he watched with wonder as Richie’s face flickered between a series of emotions too quickly for him to decipher them. He settled on a sad, but warm smile. Under his fingers, the hunger in his belly seemed to wane.

“I think it’s pretty cool,” he said. “How does it feel to finally be as badass as me, Eds?”

He snorted, sliding his shirt down and playfully punching the taller boy in the shoulder.

“Beep beep, Chee,” he scolded lightly.

“Uh,” Mike interjected, breaking the spell. “I hate to be that guy, but we should really get to Bill and Bev. They’ll be wondering where we are.”

Eddie blushed and Richie all but jumped away from him, clearing his throat, and jumping into a rendition of one of his Voices – the one that was meant to be British. Rolling his eyes, Eddie hopped onto the front of his bike and allowed himself to smile. It was so early in the morning that nobody was out in the streets and Eddie could breathe a sigh of relief as they whizzed through Derry on their bikes towards the park. At least he wouldn’t have to worry about _that._ He could believe he was normal, at least for a little while.

They saw Bill and Beverly sitting on one of the park benches and made a beeline for them. No sooner had Eddie popped off the front of Eddie’s bike, did he realise something was terribly wrong. His heart dropped. Beverly had one hand on Bill’s back, rubbing the way adults do when someone is sad, and when Bill looked up at them his eyes were red and puffy from crying. He looked exhausted.

“Billy?” Eddie said, gently, approaching slowly. “What’s wrong?”

Bill smiled sadly. “Hi, E-Eddie. Y-Y-You look g-good. Wh-What’s with the e-e-e-eyepatch?”

His stutter was worse than normal. Eddie forced a small smile and gestured to the offending garment weakly.

“Fucked it in the accident,” he said. “Sensitive to light.”

The taller boy made a small ‘ah’ motion and his watery eyes looked around at the others for a moment before they fell to his lap. Beverly shot them all wary looks.

“Bill,” Mike pressed, albeit tentatively. “What’s wrong? Is everything alright?”

Bill didn’t seem to want to answer. He wiped furiously as his eyes and his nose wrinkled in frustration and Eddie knelt down in front of him, taking his hands in his own. Meeting Bill’s eyes with his own, he just squeezed his fingers gently and inclined his head as if to say _it’s alright, take your time._ Beverly kept rubbing over his shoulder blades. The others kept enough distance so not to crowd him. They worked like clockwork, and Eddie was eternally grateful that they complemented each other so well.

“It’s okay, Bill,” Beverly said very softly. “We’re here for you.”

Eddie nodded. The walls Bill had hastily built up around whatever it was that was hurting him began to crumble; Eddie could see it in his eyes, the way they relaxed in resignation. He braced as Bill’s lips parted and he gave a small, shaky sigh.

“They took him,” he said in a broken voice. “They took Georgie.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: The Bowers-Hockstetter Gang makes an appearance and so does another major player.


	3. Hikiawase // Introduction

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Homophobia, AIDS used as an insult, vomiting, referenced sexual abuse, minor character death

Eddie stared at Bill for a moment, wide eyed and frozen while his heart jackhammered in his chest and in his ears. Georgie… was gone? Missing? Bile rose up in the back of his throat and he was vaguely aware of the Losers talking above him, but the roaring in his ears muffled their voices. _I’m afraid all those dead kids aren’t my work._ The other Ghoul had taken Georgie, and now Eddie knew exactly what would have happened to the poor kid in vivid detail. He knew Georgie wasn’t missing. Above him, Bill’s adamant refusal to believe that Georgie wasn’t dead rang out like a bell and he winced, the panic and horror swallowing him whole. He let go of Bill’s hands and sank back on his heels, his fingers shooting to his scar. Poor little Georgie wouldn’t have been as lucky as Eddie was.

Suddenly, his watch began to beep, and it tore him out of his stupor in the blink of an eye. Everyone stopped to look at him and he growled, switching it off and ragging it off his wrist. He didn’t give a shit about his pills; his body could reject his Ghoul organs all they liked if they wanted to. Maybe then he could get new ones. Ripping off his fanny pack, he stormed over to the closes trash can and flung the lot of it in without a word.

“E-Eddie?” Bill questioned faintly as he stalked back towards them. “What a-a-are you-?”

“Fuck the pills.” He couldn’t take them even if he wanted to. “What _happened?”_

Bill recoiled slightly. “He- I-I was a-a-asleep. He w-wanted to p-play with a p-paper boat, but I-I told him not to luh-leave without me. He snuck o-out.”

“I thought…” Beverly began, scowling to herself. “I thought maybe the guy that died in the accident… I thought it could have been him. That we’d all be safe.”

Grimacing, Eddie closed his eyes and ran his shaking fingers over his face. This was all his fault. If he’d have just told them when he said he was going to, maybe Georgie would still be alive. Bill would have made him promise not to go out alone, would have made sure of it, but now… Now Georgie was dead. There was no doubt in his mind about that. The readiness with which Charlie was going to kill him was foiled only by pure luck and a metal beam to the head.

“It wasn’t him,” he rasped. “He told me it wasn’t him.”

Everyone’s heads snapped to look at him and their eyes burned into his skin. He couldn’t meet their gaze.

“What?” Ben blurted. “Eddie, what are you talking about?”

He sank down to his knees and fell back against the leg of the bench, closing his eyes and banging the back of his head against the metal. The dull pain grounded him and guided his thoughts away from the image of Charlie swallowing his flesh until Bill’s hand in his hair stopped him gently.

“E-Eddie,” his voice said. “D-Don’t hurt yourself. Please.”

“Sorry, Billy…” He sighed. “Once I realised what was happening… I just asked him point blank. He told me the missing kids weren’t him. I was just… a _treat_ , in his words.”

There was silence. He pried his eyes open to face them and they were all either staring at him or staring at each other as they registered what he’d said.

“Eds,” Richie said, crouching down in front of him. “I think you need to tell us what happened.”

Eddie took a deep breath. Then, carefully, he picked through what happened is as little detail as he could manage. He told them that Charlie lured him away. That they went to the warehouse. That, once inside, he jumped on him with a knife. That he fought for his life. Then, the building collapsing. Under the pressure of their rapt attention, he found he couldn’t tell them the whole truth. He just couldn’t do it. It was like a wall too high for him to clear. After he was finished, they were all stunned, and the silence was thick and heavy. Eddie squirmed and looked away. It felt dirty, to lie to them like that. He was pathetic.

“Why did you go with him, Eddie?” Richie asked, and he sounded _heartbroken_. “Why? After all those kids have gone missing?”

“He was _nice_ to me,” he answered, heatedly, before he ran out of energy for it. “It doesn’t matter now, anyway. He told me the missing kids weren’t his work. He didn’t say who it was.”

“B-But there _is_ s-s-someone taking k-kids?” Bill asked, wide eyed.

Eddie nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, there is.”

“… Why did he try to kill _you_ , though?” Ben asked. “Did he say?”

 _Yeah, children are treats._ “He thought I was cute.”

Ben blanched and Richie turned pink.

“He-” Richie choked. “Uh, right…”

“I think he liked me,” Eddie admitted. “He said he wanted to have fun with me first.”

Now, Richie’s cheeks were bright red. “F-Fun?”

His hand ghosted over his neck and he nodded. “Yeah. He bit me.”

“What a weirdo,” Mike commented, though it was clear he was disturbed and uncomfortable. “Good riddance.”

“Yeah,” Richie squeaked. “I second that.”

Bill sighed, putting his face in his hands for a moment to rub at his eyes before looking up again. “A-At least w-we know we w-were right. There’s s-s-something bad happening in D-Derry.”

 _You have no idea,_ Eddie thought, _none of you have the slightest fucking clue._

If they ever found out about him, and he was under no illusion that he could hide it forever, then they would fucking hate him for not telling them. He could already see it – the looks on their faces. They’d look betrayed, at first, then after that would come the disgust. Why would they be friends with a monster like him? He was no better than the thing that took Georgie and all those other kids. Looking at Richie, still sat in front of him, Eddie realised would do anything to never see his handsome face twist in disgust.

“We need a plan,” Beverly said, suddenly.

Bill looked at her sharply. “P-Plan…?”

“If we’re going to stop this, we’ll need a plan. It’s obvious nobody except us is going to do anything. The adults don’t even know there’s a problem.”

“I brought it up to my mom,” Ben said, brow furrowed. “It was like she didn’t even hear me.”

“And with Eddie’s accident, the day after it happened everyone seemed to forget about it,” Stan said. “My dad didn’t know what I was talking about when I mentioned it.”

They were catching on. He thought about what Miss Kurosawa said about Derry, that it seemed to be the only place in the world where nobody knew about Ghouls. So, as it stood, they really were on their own. He closed his eyes and remembered the fear he felt in the warehouse. After a moment, he pushed himself up and onto the bench beside Bill, bringing his knees to his chest and leaning into his side. Bill put an arm around Eddie’s shoulders, squeezing.

“We’ll figure this out, Billy,” he said. “I promise. For Georgie.”

Bill sniffled and the next thing they knew, all the Losers were piling into a giant hug with Bill sobbing in the centre, holding onto Eddie for dear life. Around him, Richie’s arms fit snugly on either side of him to hold onto Bill with Eddie sandwiched between them, his glasses pressing into Eddies hair. Slowly, Eddie let one hand slide up to hang on Richie’s bicep. They were all crying, to varying degrees, in a mixture of sadness for Bill and fear for what they were facing. If Eddie’s tears were tainted with shame, nobody noticed. He held onto his friends while he still could.

*

When he was back at his house, Stan surprised him with his fanny pack.

He blinked at it. “When did you-?”

“When you were staring into space,” he deadpanned. “At least take your immunosuppressants, alright? We nearly lost you once already. I’d rather not have to lose you for real.”

There was a sincerity in his voice that shouldn’t have surprised Eddie because Stan was always the fatherly type, the one grounding them all with logic, but it took him aback anyway. Eddie took the pack carefully, forcing a placating smile and nodding.

“I’m sorry, Stan,” he said quietly. “I… I didn’t mean to…”

“I know. It was stupid, really fucking stupid, and I don’t ever want you to do it again, but…” his eyes softened. “Adults can be persuasive, can’t they?”

He shrugged. “He just… He was nice.”

“That’s what they _always_ say,” Richie said. “The serial killers are the nice ones, I’m telling you! Never trust someone that’s nice!”

“Beep beep, Richie,” Stan replied. “Let’s just start with sticking together and _not_ going off with anyone we don’t know?”

Eddie huffed. “Alright, I get it. I’m dumb. Can I go back to bed now?”

Stan snorted. “See you later, Eddie.”

“Bye, Eddie,” Ben said, gently, echoed by Mike.

The three of them took off on their bikes, but Richie stayed behind. He had his hands on the handles of his bike, standing idly beside it. His eyes were on the floor between them for a moment before he looked up and Eddie tilted his head expectantly.

“What’s wrong, Richie?”

Richie looked away again. “I just… Did… Did he…? Ugh, I don’t know-”

He cut himself off and appeared to be scowling at himself, with his nose wrinkled and his brow pinched, mouth flattened into a thin line. Eddie hugged his fanny pack to his belly and rocked back on his heels.

“Is it about Charlie?” he asked, uncertainly.

Richie flicked the bell on his bike. “Did he- Did he, like… touch you? Like, you know… that.”

“Oh,” Eddie paled. “No, god no, he didn’t- _No_. It- he just, said some things. And then bit me.”

His friend relaxed visibly, his shoulders sagging with a small sigh of relief. “Well that’s… good, I guess. What did he say..?”

Eddie hesitated and Richie nearly tripped over his own tongue with how fast he backtracked.

“You don’t have to tell me! I’m just here if you want to… talk.”

Comfort wasn’t Richie’s strong suit. He was better when he could make jokes to lighten the mood, but he couldn’t joke about this. Eddie almost wished he would.

“He told me he was doing me a favour,” Eddie said, slowly, cheeks heating up. “That I’d grow up cute, but everyone would just f-fuck me and leave me behind. He said nobody would care-”

The sound of a bike hitting the ground made him jump, but it was soothed quickly by arms circling his waist and Richie’s weight leaning into him. He held his breath for a moment. Then, slowly, he hugged him back, burying his face in the taller boys shirt.

“He was lying, Eds,” Richie said. “You _are_ cute, but that’s not all you are. Okay? You’re so much more than that. We all care about you so much.”

“I’m _not_ cute,” he huffed.

Richie pulled away with a grin. “Yes, you are, Spaghetti. So cute I could eat ya!”

Eddie had to really try not to flinch, instead shoving Richie’s shoulder lightly. “Shut up, Trashmouth, and stop calling me that!”

“Jeez, someone needs their beauty sleep!” Richie leaned down to pick up his bike, shooting Eddie a final smile. “I’ll see you later, Eds. I’m really glad you’re alive.”

*

It was a couple of days later, when he was finally allowed to leave the house properly without his mother around, that the Losers met up to discuss the Plan. Bill still seemed shaken up, especially when he spoke directly about Georgie, but for the most part he was just determined. It was admirable and Eddie was more than slightly jealous because he felt like he was falling apart. With every day that passed, Eddie woke up and ate, only to throw it back up again. He was getting tired of throwing up. He missed the taste of food, but he missed not having to be perpetually hungry even more. The waves of pain were becoming harder to ignore and more frequent to boot.

It didn’t help that Stan had brought snacks. Just some bags of chips and some candy, but they were snacks, nonetheless. They sat in the middle of the circle they sat in and Eddie stared at the food as the others talked. Richie was stuffing his face, as usual, and Eddie sighed. It would be so nice to eat, but even the smell was making him feel sick.

“You okay, Eddie?” Stan asked, because of course he noticed. “You’re not eating.”

“I’m not hungry,” he said, rubbing his arms nervously. “That’s all.”

“You’re always hungry, Eds,” Richie said through a mouthful of chips. “Cuz your mom might be good in bed but she’s a shit cook.”

Eddie slapped his arm. “Fuck _off_.”

“Seriously, Eddie, he’s right, you’re always hungry,” Stan pressed. “Are you feeling okay?”

“I-I’m fine.”

“When was the last time you ate?” Ben asked.

And then he panicked. “I don’t- I’m not sure-”

A packet of chips landing in his lap cut him off and he looked at it for a moment without touching it. Dread pooled deep in his gut and he breathed slowly through his nose to quell the nausea. He glanced up at Stan carefully.

“Eat,” Stan said. “Please, Eddie?”

He huffed, schooling his expression as he opened the packet and dipped his fingers in. The smell was even worse up close, and he held his breath as he put the first few in his mouth and chewed, steeling himself against the flavour. They tasted like acid, but he kept going. He swallowed thickly and exhaled, offering Stan a small, forced smile. Stan smiled back, but it was equally as uncertain. He kept eating, slowly, little by little, and eventually the focus shifted.

“A-Alright,” Bill began. “So, w-we know there’s s-s-someone taking k-kids. Th-They could s-still be alive, which w-would explain why n-n-no bodies have b-been found.”

“They could be being held somewhere,” Mike added. “But… where? Where could someone hide that many kids?”

Ben shrugged. “Maybe whatever’s making the adults in Derry act so weird is making them blind, too. The kids could be in plain sight and they wouldn’t know.”

“So-” Richie swallowed his mouthful. “What, there’s, like, a spell on this place? Do we have witches? Oh my God, do we have a _Coven?”_

“This is s-serious, Richie,” Bill replied flatly.

“I _am_ being serious!”

Eddie chewed and swallowed. It was entirely mechanical, and the more he ate, the more his belly seemed to turn in on itself. He just had to keep breathing.

“Maybe it’s something in the water,” Stan offered. “You know, like a chemical spill or something?”

“But then wouldn’t it be affecting all of us, too?” Beverly countered.

Bill sighed. “If we c-can’t get the a-a-adults to listen to us, w-we’ll need to f-find the kids o-ourselves.”

“But- what then? They won’t believe us,” Ben said.

“Then we’ll have to save them ourselves, if they’re alive,” Beverly responded with confidence, looking between them resolutely. “Or… if they’re not… we’ll just have to force them to see it. Take them to where the bodies are.”

“Th-They’re alive,” Bill snapped, but he meant _he’s_ alive and they all knew it.

“Besides,” Ben continued. “Who’s to say they won’t just blame us? How else would we know where all those bodies were…?”

It was about then that Eddie shot to his feet, surprising them all, as he spun around with his stomach tightening painfully. He barely made it a few strides away from them before he was puking into the grass, his whole torso tensing and spasming as upchucked the small amount of food he’d eaten. Falling to his knees, he barely heard them shouting his name over the blood rushing in his ears. He clutched at his belly and coughed up the last of it, choking slightly. Someone was patting his back and another hand was smoothing his hair from his face. He should have been able to keep that down – _why couldn’t he keep it down?_

“Eddie? Eddie, just breathe, okay? Relax,” Beverly soothed. “That’s it.”

He shuddered violently and wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist, gasping for breath now his body was allowing it.

“What the fuck’s up with the sissy?” A harsh voice shouted towards them. “What, did he finally get AIDS or some shit?”

There was snickering and laughing, and Eddie’s hands formed fists. He really did not have the patience to put up with Bowers right now. Heat flooded into his cheeks and he gritted his teeth so tightly he was sure the others could hear his teeth grinding together.

“Fuck you, Bowers,” he heard Richie hiss. “Or maybe I’ll just fuck your mom instead!”

_“You lousy little bastard!”_

There was a strangled sound, which probably came from Richie and sounded suspiciously like ‘uh oh’, before hands were hoisting him to his feet desperately.

“Run!” Beverly shrieked.

So, they ran. Eddie’s hand was gripped tightly in someone else’s and he was trying his best to keep up, but the nausea was still clouding his mind and weighing down his limbs. He looked up at Richie, who was dragging him by the hand, and the boy looked back at him urgently.

“Hurry it up, Eds, they’re closing in!”

He cast a cursory glance over his shoulder and sure enough, Bowers was closing in behind them with his switch blade out and his face a frightening shade of red, Hockstetter by his side with a toothy grin. Criss and Belch were trailing not far behind, also grinning wildly from ear to ear. Bowers was frightening because he did what he did of his own volition, without question and with such animal rage, but Criss and Belch were frightening because they followed his every word. Even worse than all three was Patrick. He just did it because he enjoyed it. Nothing more, nothing less.

“Look at ‘em holding hands!” Belch hollered, laughing.

“I’ll gut you both!” Bowers screeched.

The switch blade glinted in the sun. Eddie tripped, the toe of his shoe hitting a hidden dip in the ground, and with a gasp his hand slipped from Richie’s grasp and he hit the floor heavily, the air knocked clean out of his lungs. Richie ran a few paces before skidding to a halt with a cry of Eddie’s name, the others stopping abruptly ahead of them to start turning back. It was too late.

Bowers grabbed Eddie by the back of his shirt and pulled him roughly up onto his knees and into his heaving chest. The cold steel pressing against his throat stopped him from struggling before he could even start. One of Bowers’ arms trapped his own to his chest while the other held the blade to his neck, breath puffing hotly his ear. Bowers was seething and his grip was like iron.

“Stay right where you are,” he growled. “Or the sissy gets it.”

Richie froze, fists half raised. “Let him go, Bowers!”

“Or what?” Bowers sneered. “What’ll you do, Tozier?”

Patrick, who had been eerily silent, barked a laugh and showed off his makeshift flamethrower. The fire lit the corner of Eddie’s vision and the sound made his blood run cold.

After not receiving an answer, Eddie felt the older boy behind him grin. He hated the way the other boys body felt pressed up against his back, knowing that it was _Bowers’_ body, and by the look on Richie’s face he hated seeing it. Slowly, at first, Eddie felt his mouth begin to water. His heart raced in his chest and his teeth ached. He was certain that underneath his eye patch, his eye would be that of a Ghoul. The urge was unmistakable… He wanted to _rip Bowers’ throat out with his **teeth**. _

Bowers switched suddenly, his empty hand coming up to grab him by his jaw, fingers digging into his cheeks and pushing his head back as the hand with the blade slide down to his belly.

“You want to match your fatty friend, huh, sissy boy?” Bowers hissed. “You want my name on your body, huh? Bet your boyfriend would _love that-_ ”

Eddie felt his face contort into a snarl. With a growl, he fought against Bowers’ hand and slammed his head backwards, instantly hearing the tell-tale crunch of a nose breaking. Bowers dropped his knife and Eddie somehow managed to catch it before spinning around and swinging it wildly through the air. Bowers made a wounded noise and he heard Criss yelp a ‘what the fuck?!’ as he scrambled backwards and into Richie’s waiting hands. He helped Eddie to his feet and he only fleetingly caught the blood gushing from the open wound on Bowers’ cheek before they were sprinting away.

“Holy _shit,_ Eds,” Richie gasped as they ran.

But Eddie couldn’t respond. He had to swallow the spit that had gathered in his mouth and ignore the smell of blood, and the fact it smelt _good._ A growl sat at the base of his throat, but he refused to let it escape.

They took a turn into the woods and paused behind the trees.

“They’re going to be fucking _pissed_ ,” Richie said. “Eddie, are you okay?”

He nodded. “Y-Yeah.”

“You took his knife,” Mike said in disbelief. “Yeah, he’s going to be mad, for sure.”

“Way to fill me with confidence guys,” he replied, voice shaking. “What do we do?”

_“There they are! Get them!”_

Bill started moving. “We-We’re running!”

What happened next was purely by accident. Whether it was the natural way the woods was configured, or the blind panic, or stupidity, or all three in one, the Losers ended up separated. They lost Stan when he took a tumble down a ditch, Beverly and Bill when they decided to turn left when the rest of them were going right and it was too late to change, then Mike and Ben just… disappeared. That left Richie and Eddie running through the trees alone, with a very furious group of murderous teenage boys following behind.

“Eddie, stop!”

Richie’s hand in his grounded him to a halt and he looked at him in disbelief.

“What are you-?”

“I can distract them,” Richie said. “And you can make a run for it.”

Eddie’s jaw dropped. “No! I’m not leaving you with them!”

“Please, Eddie! I won’t let anyone hurt you again!”

He stared at Richie for a moment, his heart full, as the gang chasing them got closer. Richie pushed him slightly, not hard enough to be mean but hard enough to make him take a step back.

“Go!” he said. “Now!”

So, Eddie ran. He felt like a coward. For a moment, he wondered why he wasn’t more like Charlie – stronger, faster, braver… but as quickly as the thought came to him, he shoved it back down. He gritted his teeth tightly as he ran through the trees, listening to the sound of Richie hollering behind him, trying to get their attention. He kept running until he reached the Barrens, where the water splashed up his legs with every step. It was only then that he realised he was in a part of the Barrens he didn’t know. He must have ran a long way to get there.

He waited there for some time. He waited for Bowers to burst out of the trees, but he never did. He waited for Richie to stumble out covered in bruises and blood, but he never did, either. It was just Eddie, alone, in a place he didn’t know.

Eddie started to walk upstream, still clutching Bowers’ switch blade in his hand, when he noticed a smell in the air. It was like the smell of the dead body from the car accident, but stronger and sweeter by far, and it nearly knocked him over. His throat tightened and his mouth began watering so quickly that he had to wipe his mouth in surprise. What _was_ that smell? Dazed and enticed, Eddie followed the smell silently. It took him to a place he recognised, at least – one of the sewer openings. He barely had the wherewithal to be disgusted by the fact he was drawn to the sewer, instead approaching the pipe slowly. The smell here was overwhelming.

Then he stopped, eyes wide. Though it was dark inside the sewer pipe, he could see the shadowy outlines of people. One lay on the ground, head just peeking out into the light, with their glassy eyes gazing at him. _Patrick Hockstetter._ He recoiled, tripping and falling flat on his backside. Horror sank in very slowly, like stepping into a vat of honey. He’d been lured by the smell of another corpse. He gasped in disgust, but all it did was fill his nose with that smell again, and he slapped his hands over his nose and mouth to block it out. Blood flowed out of the pipe into the water and the body twitched and jerked to the sound of flesh tearing from bone.

Above it, another figure stilled, and the movement and the noise stopped. Even in the shadows, the glowing red irises were unmissable as they stared at him. His hackles rose, fear choking him, as the figure rose up from the body and began to walk towards him. Long, claw-like fingers came up to clutch the outside of the pipe and a face appeared. Eddie couldn’t say what they looked like – their face was too caked in blood and gore. All Eddie could see was red eyes and blood-stained teeth.

“Hello,” came a voice, twisted and vaguely inhuman. “You must be the Half-Breed.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: Eddie gets a warning and a lesson.


	4. Keikoku // Warning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Blood/gore, attempted self harm, discussion of Munchhausen Syndrome

The Ghoul tilted its head at the lack of a response, slinking out of the pipe and rising to its full height in the open. It was _huge,_ probably the tallest person Eddie had seen in his life. _This is the one killing those kids,_ he thought, _this is the one that took Georgie._ Bile threatened to rise in his throat, and he swallowed thickly. It didn’t look human, like Kurosawa or Charlie. It had a chunk of what looked like Patrick’s thigh in its left hand. When it spoke, its voice was garbled and raw, as if its throat were full of sandpaper.

“When I heard you had taken poor Charlie’s organs, I didn’t think it would mean anything,” it said. “But now… I see you. Aren’t you a _fun_ little thing?”

It took a step closer and Eddie scrambled back, the water soaking his clothes and splashing up into his face as he tried to get away. The Ghoul laughed and it sounded giddy and childish, like a clown.

“So fun!” it exclaimed, grinning. “And so tiny!”

Then the smile dropped from its face. In a few long strides it was in front of Eddie and crouching down. Eddie fell down onto his elbows to look up into the creature’s eyes. He couldn’t move. He could barely breathe. Blood dribbled off its chin and onto his shirt.

“You’re hungry,” it stated. “I can see it in your face. You’ve been starving yourself. Here, let me see you eat. I need to _see_.”

It shoved the chunk of Hockstetter’s thigh up to his face, pressing it against his mouth and _pushing_. Eddie reacted purely on instinct. He reached up and slapped the creatures hand away with an indignant snarl, the meat flying off into the water. Eddie froze, hand in the air. It looked at where the flesh had landed with its pale, inexpressive eyes, before its gaze very slowly swung back to look down at him. After a moment, it snatched his hand in its own, engulfing it in its long fingers, before grabbing him by the chin with the other as he tried to pull himself away.

Its thumb ran over the middle of his lips and pushed into his mouth, the taste of blood flooding his senses. It pressed the pad of its thumb against his tongue and Eddie tried to recoil, but his grip was too tight. Then came the horrifying realisation that _it tasted good_ and he almost gave in. It hummed, its thumb smearing the thick blood inside of his mouth and over his teeth before grabbing his tongue between its thumb and index finger. Eddie choked in surprise as it pulled his tongue out of his mouth and released his wrist to hold his jaw open, the second thumb hooked over his teeth and the fingers pushing his head back. His hands scrambled for purchase as he fought against it, fingers scraping and clutching at its long arms, trying to push it away.

Eventually, it let go. Eddie’s chest heaved and he wiped furiously at his mouth, which only served to move the blood around instead of removing it.

“Interesting,” it purred. “I think I like you, Half-Breed, but… make no mistake… If you encroach on my territory again… I will kill you. Am I understood?”

Eddie nodded mutely. He watched as it slunk back to the sewer pipe. Red eyes glared over its shoulder and, with the sight of its wolfish smile, Eddie was springing to his feet and sprinting upstream to where he knew the Barrens led back up into civilisation. As soon as his feet hit the sidewalk, he was toppling down onto his knees and trying desperately to catch his breath. He was furious with himself – why didn’t he do anything? The Ghoul that killed Georgie, that killed all those kids, was right in front of him and he did nothing! The switch blade just sat like a rock in his hand, his whole body frozen solid. He was useless. Surely these Ghoul organs gave him some sort of power… Surely he could have _done_ something…

He groaned as a wave of hunger-pains made his eyes roll up into his skull. The Ghoul’s phantom touch still filled his mouth and he scratched at his jaw with a whimper. How was he supposed to live like this? Bowers’ blade caught his eye through his tears. _What if I just cut them out?_ _Then they’d have to give me new ones._ The thought was fuelled purely by panic and was devoid of any real logic, but at that moment it seemed perfectly reasonable. He took a ragged breath and pulled his shirt up into his bloodied mouth, holding it tightly between his teeth as he took the switch blade into both hands and raised it above his head.

 _Cut it out,_ his head screamed, _cut it out, cut it out, **cut it** -_

The knife came down, but no pain followed. He gasped, rigid in disbelief, the shirt falling from his teeth as he stared wide eyed at the blade. It had bent completely. It didn’t even make a scratch. He hardly even felt it at all. The switch blade slipped from his fingers and he deflated, hands numb and unresponsive. His only chance… failed. _That rules out ever killing yourself. You really are stuck like this, now._ He choked on a sob. Eddie must have looked like quite a sight, covered in blood, and crying as he was, but he was sure no adult would even notice.

It was a long time before he could stop crying. Only then did he force himself to move.

*

Kurosawa was a seasoned Ghoul, a woman of education and experience in equal measure, yet she was still royally and thoroughly stumped by the Derry Problem. The town seemed to be a complete enigma, and in all her life she’d never known anything like it. Gluttonous, flesh-crazed Ghouls were one thing – she knew how to deal with _those –_ but this was something else. This was almost beyond anything a Ghoul could do.

Then there was the question of the Half-Breed. She’d never seen anything like him before, either. It was all bundled under one big question mark that Kurosawa couldn’t begin to understand. She was beginning to regret letting him leave so soon, but she knew bombarding him with the details in one fell swoop would likely be too much to handle.

So, when he came into her arcade for a second time that week, she was immensely relieved. That is, until she actually _looked_ at him. His mouth was covered in blood and aside from the puffy redness around his eyes his face was disturbingly devoid of emotion. She leapt into action, taking his wrist without a word, and tugging him into the backroom with her heart in her throat. _Don’t let it be that,_ she thought, but another voice pushed it away, _if it is that, then it’s your fault for letting him go._

She bit her tongue and tried not to think about how small his wrist was in her grip. He was such a small boy; smaller than most. She wondered how he managed to survive Charlie’s attack in the first place. _Oh, now, don’t be obtuse,_ another part of her retorted, _don’t pretend you can’t feel it._ As she shut the door behind them and looked at him properly, she could only try to repress a shudder. _He has so much power. Too much, for such a small thing. It’s amazing it hasn’t torn him apart already._

Taking him through the backroom and into the staff restroom, she sat him down on the toilet seat and pushed his hair out of his face.

“Eddie?” She asked gently. “Can you hear me?”

His eyes seemed to focus briefly. A small frown, an even smaller nod.

“Okay, that’s a good start,” she continued. “I’m going to clean you up.”

He didn’t respond, so she set to work as wiping the blood from his face. She was almost done by the time his fingers twitched and he finally looked at her properly, without that faraway look on his face. Then, too faintly for her to understand, he mumbled something.

“What was that?” she asked.

He squirmed. “Toothbrush…?”

Kurosawa blinked. “Oh, uh, no dear, I don’t have one with me, but you can use a fresh cloth for that, if you like.”

Eddie nodded. “Thank you.”

She found a spare cloth and handed it to him. The boy took it gingerly, avoiding her fingers, and slowly made his way to the sink. She watched silently as he wetted the cloth and began to clean the blood from his teeth and tongue like it was burning him.

“Child,” she began carefully. “What happened?”

He paused, his brown eye flickering towards her in the mirror. For a moment, she thought he was just going to ignore her question, but instead he finished cleaning his mouth and straightened his back with a shaky sigh.

“I think I saw it,” he said, quiet and disturbed. “The other Ghoul.”

 _Oh._ He didn’t seem to want to elaborate, and eventually the silence became too much, and Kurosawa stood up slowly so not to frighten the child.

“Would you like to play a game of Go?”

The boy stared at her in the mirror for a moment, mouth parted. “Huh?”

“Go,” she repeated, placidly. “Would you like to play it?”

“I don’t know what that is,” he said apologetically, blushing faintly, with some of the anxiety leaving his frame at the change of subject.

She smiled. “That’s quite alright, I can teach you.”

Leaving the restroom, she strode towards the cupboards and pulled out a board and a small black bag, placing the on the carpet in the backroom. She sat on one side with her legs crossed and the black back at her side, gesturing the boy to do the same when he eventually peaked his head out of the restroom to watch her. As he did so, she opened the small black bag.

“These are called stones,” she began. “One player has white stones, the other black. The aim of Go is to capture your opponent’s territories and remove their stones from the board. We take it in turns to place stones, and you have to work towards surrounding the other persons stones in order to capture and remove them.”

The boy tilted his head. “So, it’s a bit like checkers…?”

“A little,” she said. “Only instead of hopping over the stones, you surround them. Would you like to be white or black?”

“Um,” the boy pondered the question deeply. “White.”

She passed him the stones and he held them cupped in his hands for a moment before placing them gently on the floor beside him.

“Black always goes first,” she continued, and this time she allowed herself to smile when he wrinkled his nose at the fact. “At the end, you get points for how much territory you captured and how many stones you have as prisoners. The stones go on where the lines cross, not in the squares.”

Kurosawa placed a stone. She watched carefully as the boy eyed the board, gingerly picking up a stone and placing it down on the other side of the board.

“I don’t believe you’ve told me your name,” she said, placing another stone. “Our last meeting was quite stressful for you, so it appears I quite forgot to ask.”

“Eddie,” he replied softly. “Eddie Kaspbrak.”

“That’s a nice name,” she said. “Do you want to talk about what happened, Eddie?”

He hesitated, instead taking his time placing his next stone before answering. When he did respond, it was as if he were forcing it out.

“It was… It was eating someone from school. It told me not to come into its territory again or it’d kill me. It wanted me to eat Patrick, but I refused.” He picked at the hem of his shorts. “It said I was interesting and put its fingers in my mouth.”

She paused. “They… what?”

“I think it was trying to look inside my mouth,” he explained, looking pale and avoiding her eyes. “I-It had blood all over its fingers and I- I think it _must_ be the one taking all those kids.”

She placed a stone and sighed, folding her hands in her lap.

“It is not unusual for Ghouls to become what we call binge-eaters,” she explained. “The urge to hunt and kill goes beyond survival and becomes hunting for pleasure. There are two sides to the spectrum. The binge-eaters and Ghouls like myself, who try our best to source our food from those already dead from natural causes.”

“So, it’s a binge-eater,” Eddie repeated, placing a stone. “What was Charlie?”

“He was procuring his food from me for a while, but he often complained about it. I was not surprised when I heard what happened, but… I had hoped he was all bark and no bite.”

“Well, he bit alright,” Eddie grumbled, touching his neck before his eyes widened. “Wait, he bit me! On my neck and my arm, I saw my own bone! Then I woke up in the hospital and it was like it never happened! And then-” he stopped abruptly, jaw audibly clicking shut.

When it looked like he wasn’t going to continue, she explained, “Ghouls have a regenerative quality far faster than humans. Your body will always heal itself, to a certain extent. There are some injuries it can’t fix if they’re damaging enough. I want you to remember that. You’re not invincible.”

“Like Charlie. He… A metal beam landed on his head.”

She nodded. “Yes, that would do the trick.” She then frowned. “Tell me, you refer to Charlie as ‘he’, but this other Ghoul as ‘it’. Why?”

Eddie’s brown eye flickered away in thought, brow furrowed. “I… I’m not sure. There’s just something _wrong_ with it. It’s not – it doesn’t feel like a living thing. I don’t know how to explain it. It had a face, but… but it wasn’t right.”

“Interesting,” she said, and captured some of his stones. “Where was it when you met it?”

“One of the sewer outlets,” he said. “In the Barrens.”

She scowled. “The sewers, then. Of course.”

Eddie seemed to squirm. “Um… Miss Kurosawa… About the healing thing… Does that mean medication doesn’t work?”

“That’s right,” she said. “The body has no use for them. You can’t get sick and it has no use for painkillers or steroids. It treats them as food, and you know what it does to food.”

“Oh,” he said in a small voice. “It’s just… my mom has me take a lot of medication and I can’t keep it down. She’s going to find out eventually.”

Kurosawa frowned. “What medication?”

He explained. Or rather, he rattled off a seemingly unending list of pills and medications to the point where she stopped him before he could finish, dumbfounded. Why the hell would a child need so much medication? Some of them didn’t even make any sense, others were just placebos.

“My child,” she began, carefully. “I don’t wish to make you uncomfortable… but I don’t think you needed any of those.”

He frowned. “But- But I was sick. Mom took me to the doctors-”

“How many?”

Eddie paused. “What?”

“How many doctors did she take you to?”

“Uh- a lot. She said they weren’t doing their jobs properly. They said I was fine when I wasn’t.”

Her heart sank. She’d heard of this before. “Eddie. I suspect those doctors were telling the truth.”

“No,” he replied, firmly. “That’s not- That’s not _true.”_

“Alright,” she said carefully. “But I think you should research some of that medication you were on when you get the chance. Besides, you need not take them anymore. Your body will heal itself.”

He didn’t reply immediately. Instead, he placed another stone and captured some of hers. “Is… Is this a Japanese game?” A change in subject, then.

“It originated in China, 2,500 years go,” she said softly. “But yes, it is very popular in Japan. It’s considered the oldest board game that has been played continuously to the present day.”

His eyes widened. “Whoa.”

She permitted herself another smile. “Indeed.”

 _You like him,_ she thought to herself, _he reminds you of Haru._ She flinched, hand hovering above the board with a stone between her fingers, but quickly pushed the thought away and proceeded to capture two more white stones. _He’s not Haru._ Looking up, Eddie was watching her worriedly, though he wasn’t saying anything. She sighed. No, he wasn’t Haru, but he’s about the same age, and there was a distinct familiarity in his dark curls and delicate face that meant the comparison was unavoidable.

“It is a game I played a lot with an old friend of mine,” she said. “Ayako-chan was always better at it than me. I don’t think I ever won a game against her.”

“Ayako-chan?” he repeated, quizzically.

She hummed. “’Chan’ is an honorific suffix. Her name was Ayako. She was a childhood friend of mine from home.”

“What’s an honorific su-suff-?”

“Suffix,” she said. “It’s a word that you attach to the end of a name when you talk about someone. It depends on who your talking to which one you use.”

“What would I call you, then?”

“Kurosawa-san,” she replied. “It’s the same as saying ‘Mrs’ or ‘Mr’.”

“Kurosawa-san.” He thought about it for a moment before smiling. “Can I call you that now?”

“Of course,” she said.

Truth be told, Eddie was painfully adorable. It was such a shame someone so young and so sweet had to suffer so much. But it made her wonder… where was all that raw power coming from? Power came from consumption of flesh; the more you ate, the more powerful you could be. She’d never met a Ghoul so naturally powerful at such a young age.

“Eddie,” she began. “I need you to promise me something.”

He picked some of her stones off the board, taking them prisoner, before nodding mutely. Kurosawa sighed. He was so quick to trust people.

“Don’t go into the sewers,” she said, firmly. “Don’t try to find him, don’t try to be a hero. If you’re right, and he’s the child killer, then he’ll be strong. If this were a city, he’d be the alpha wolf, so to speak. The gluttons always are. He’ll kill you before you even realise you’re in danger.”

Eddie’s eye widened. “But, my friends, they…”

“You have to convince them, somehow. If you set foot in that sewer system he will kill all of you and I won’t be there to save you. I’m not even sure I could save myself.” When he didn’t answer, she reached across and took his wrist. “Promise me, Eddie.”

“But _how?”_ he cried, eye welling up. “How do I make them listen without _telling_ _them_!”

Her jaw clicked shut and for a moment they both just stared at each other, wide eyed and uncertain. The boy had a point, but the truth was she didn’t know what to say. Staying hidden was a dark shadow over the Ghoul community, and she’d seen enough Ghouls lose every human in their life by telling them the truth. Eddie was so young, losing his friends would crush him, and if his mother found out… she paled, releasing his wrist.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “But you must think of something. I will do my best to find this Ghoul on my own. Just stay safe. They will look like any other human, so trust _no one._ Do you understand?”

He deflated. “Okay, Kurosawa-san. I’ll try my best.”

“Thank you,” she breathed.

They played in silence for a while after that. Eventually, at the end of the game while Kurosawa counted the points, Eddie spoke up quietly, as if afraid to break her concentration.

“Before I saw it,” he began. “We ran into some bullies from school. When Bowers grabbed me, I… I felt… I wanted to kill him. And… when I smelt the body…”

She waited patiently for him to elaborate, but he didn’t. He merely looked at the board with an expression on his face that looked like shame.

“It’s our nature,” Kurosawa said. “The difference is whether or not we bow to it. That’s the difference between being a Ghoul and being a monster.” She tapped the board. “And I believe I win. Better luck next time, Eddie.”

*

That night, Eddie brushed his teeth furiously, with tears in his eyes and his cheeks flushed. His mother finally caught him being sick.

She’d barged in on him as he was puking his guts up into the toilet and, once the chaos was over, he only managed to convince her that his organs might just have been sensitive to the spice she used in dinner by the skin of his teeth. She vowed never to use it again, which made little difference to Eddie. He couldn’t taste it anyway. As he spat into the sink, he winced. His body was hurting more than it normally did after he had an episode, and he felt heavy, like he’d run a whole marathon. He just put it down to puking half his body weight up and moved on.

He slipped into bed and tried to pry his mind away from the image of the Patrick Hockstetter and the Ghoul’s blood-covered face, but it stuck to him like a magnet. Every attempt to sleep was thwarted by it, and he’d always wake up in a cold sweat with a scream crawling around in his chest. As he laid in bed, he couldn’t help the tears that spilled out of his closed eyes. They were frustrated tears, mostly, but with a tinge of fear that made it hard to lay still. It was under his skin and coursing through his veins. _It knows what I look like,_ he thought, _but it didn’t try to kill me._ It was the only thought that gave him any sort of solace.

The window opening startled him upright. A familiar silhouette slid into his room and slowly closed the window behind him. He pressed his hand over his racing heart and scowled into the darkness.

“Richie,” he hissed. “What the _fuck_ are you doing here?”

Hands shot up in defence. “Whoa, wrong room, I was looking for your mom-”

“Shut the fuck up,” Eddie snapped. “Don’t be gross.”

Richie sat heavily on the side of his bed and the light from the window bathed the side of his face in dim light. Just enough to see the expression on his face. A small, worried smile.

“I wanted to make sure you were okay,” Richie admitted, at last. “I couldn’t find you after we split up, and I thought… I was scared maybe he found you first.”

“He didn’t,” Eddie soothed, but he almost wished Bowers _had_ found him instead of the Ghoul. “But I’m a fucking dead man walking, Rich. He’s going to kill me when he catches me.”

A small snort, and Richie was clambering into bed beside him. “You know, the headbutt-knife combo was pretty hot.”

He elbowed him sharply, earning a yelp. “Shut _up.”_

“It’s true,” Richie whined. “I think I might’ve swooned-”

“Richie, I swear to god…”

Richie only snickered to himself before they fell into a moment of silence. Then, uncertainly, he continued. “Seriously, is everything okay? Don’t think I’ve forgotten that you were sick before Bowers showed up. What was that about?”

Eddie sagged back into his pillow and curled up on his side, low enough to not have to look Richie in the eye for a moment. The Richie sidled down so he was lying beside him, and he had no choice. He hid his Ghoul eye in the pillow and huffed.

“It’s nothing Richie,” he lied. “I just had a stomach bug. I’m better now, I promise.”

“You could have said,” there was a touch of hurt in Richie’s voice. “We wouldn’t have made you eat anything if you felt ill.”

He sighed. Every fibre of his being screamed at him to tell the truth, to be honest and get it all off his chest, but he knew Kurosawa-san was right. While he hated the lying, it was better than what would happen if he told the truth.

“I’m sorry, Chee,” he said, and he felt his friend relax beside him.

“S’okay, Eds,” he replied softly. “I just… I don’t want to lose you again.”

There was something that sounded so fragile in that statement and Eddie shifted, snuggling into Richie’s side in the dark and putting an arm over his friends stomach. He felt Richie’s hand on his back, and he sighed. They cuddled a lot, and their friends had grown used to it, but this was different. He didn’t want the rest of them to see this. Eddie wondered what it was that was so different about it, but he couldn’t find the right word.

“I heard you,” he whispered. “When I was unconscious.”

Richie tensed. “You… what?”

“You said you never got to tell me something,” he continued. “I didn’t hear all of it. I was kind of… dipping in and out. What was it you wanted to tell me…?”

The silence that followed was almost awkwardly long, and for a moment he thought Richie had actually fallen asleep. Then, very quietly…

“It’s nothing, Eds,” he said. “I was just missing you a lot, is all.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: The Losers meet It and make a frightening discovery.

**Author's Note:**

> Please let me know what you think! Also, just to add on, I am not Japanese, so I've been relying on the internet a lot for translations and research for this fic - if anything is wrong/inaccurate/misinformed/harmful then please tell me and I will fix it! I just wanted to stay in keeping with the Japanese origin of Tokyo Ghoul :)


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